Law Commons^™

Statutory Interpretation As A Parasitic Endeavor, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The principal theme of this essay is that statutory interpretation is a project that requires advocates and judges to utilize the insights of three discrete disciplines apart from law: communications and linguistics to understand the way that legislative drafters use words to communicate to others, either in text or in extratextual legislative material; political science to describe the way that legislators behave in enacting statutes; and political theory to provide a normative guide for courts interpreting statutes in a constitutional democracy.

The Limited Relevance Of Plain Meaning, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

In this essay, the author takes the position that linguists' principal expertise - ascertaining how language is used by ordinary speakers of English - is often of little value in interpreting controversial non-criminal federal statutes. Although linguistic techniques might still aid in understanding their meaning, the author's thesis is that extrinsic evidence that is known and accessible to this small sub-community - such as legislative history, established norms of construction, and other evidence about the context in which the legislation arose - is more likely than linguistic analysis to help an outside judge shed light on what Congress meant and …

Statutory Interpretation Stories, William Eskridge, Philip Frickey, Elizabeth Garrett, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Stephen Ross contributed the chapter "The Story of Flood v. Kuhn: Dynamic Statutory Interpretation, At the Time. This title tackles the leading cases in the emerging statutory interpretation canon, as reflected in the casebooks. For each case, the leading scholar provides historical background (including details about the participants), a procedural history of the case, and an analysis of doctrinal and other lessons from the case. - From the Publisher

Reaganist Realism Comes To Detriot, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Part I of this article discusses Detroit Newspapers and explains how in deferring to the Attorney General's interpretation of the Newspaper Preservation Act, Judge Silberman disregarded every applicable technique of statutory interpretation typically used to resolve the issue. Indeed, each of these techniques suggests that Attorney General Meese's interpretation of the Act was incorrect. This part of the article also demonstrates why deference to Meese was particularly inappropriate in light of the generally accepted justifications for judicial deference to administrative interpretations of statutes.

Part II explains that Detroit Newspapers is one of several opinions by conservative Reagan judicial appointees that …

Against Constitutional Mainstreaming, Bertrall L. Ross

Bertrall L Ross

Courts interpret statutes in hard cases. Statutes are frequently ambiguous, and an enacting legislature cannot foresee all future applications of a statute. The Supreme Court in these cases often chooses statutory interpretations that privilege the values that it has emphasized in its recent constitutional jurisprudence. In doing so, the Court rejects alternative interpretations that are more consistent with the values embodied in more recently enacted statutes. This is constitutional mainstreaming—an interpretive practice that molds statutes toward the Court’s own preferred values and away from values favored by legislative majorities.

In addition to providing a novel descriptive framework for what the …